Future Projects

Auditory Learning (working title)

We're currently working on a film project with support from MIRIAD, developed with support from FLAMIN and Arts Council England

Building on the pilot project The Brilliant and the Dark, Auditory Learning transposes tactics borrowed from commercial music video production and musical cinema to reanimate out-of-copyright music recordings (1920s to 1940s jazz, blues, folk, and music hall). Through re-enactment, lip-synching, and choreography, the film weaves together musical vignettes excavated from public domain recordings.

This hauntological experiment explores the politics of the beginnings of the recording industry at a time when emerging models of peer-to-peer distribution and collaborative production are urgently problematizing established notions around the authorship, ownership and distribution of culture.

The project will announce the release of newly copyright-expired work into the public domain and will be copyleft licensed – so, like its public domain sources remains free for distribution and reuse in the future.

Parallel Anthology

Continuing their Parallel Anthology project inspired by musicologist and artist Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, Simpson and White collect parallel public domain versions of the anthology recordings not closed down by copyright; from non-attributed folk versions, to commercial recordings whose proprietary interests have expired.

So far musicians and producers that have been invited to perform covers and remixes of Parallel Anthology include: Leafcutter John, patten, Meem and Karen Gwyer.

Future performances, workshops and events are planned.